


The Medicine

by quadrotriticale



Category: The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Genre: Gen, POV Miguel, POV Second Person, hello they are small and this is the only thing i care about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 08:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15166433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrotriticale/pseuds/quadrotriticale
Summary: Your friend is called Tulio and his skin is darker than yours, so is his hair, so are his eyes. He stresses when you come back with food, asks you, Miguel, where did you get that, or Miguel, did you steal that, did they follow you, are we safe, and you haven’t gotten caught once, at least never gotten caught in a way that you couldn’t wiggle out of with your stolen goods and maybe a few extra coins, so you don’t know why he worries so much. (Still, you assure him that you weren’t followed and that he’s safe, that he should really just eat because look at this delicious food you’ve brought home, Tulio, eat so you aren't so skinny.)





	The Medicine

**Author's Note:**

> babey. babey boy.  
> anyway my favorite genre of movie is late 90s/2000s disney/dreamworks 2D adventure movies

You’re tracing circles in the dirt, drawing pictures that you know you’re going to brush away and forget about sooner rather than later. You’re 12, you can’t recall the last time you saw you’re parents, and you’re okay with that. You have a friend who’s also twelve, who talks to you about the art he sneaks peeks of, the words he’s trying to fit into his head, and you think that’s better than parents who don’t care about you, parent’s who’ve got better things to do than look after you. You like your friend better anyway. It’s hard to find food, and it’s hard to find money so you don’t have to steal food, but you have somewhere with a roof even if you’re not supposed to be there, and someone who cares about you, so you think that’s okay. You think, if God wanted you to have a family, if God wanted you to be wealthy, if God wanted you to not have to steal to eat, he would have provided you with the things you’d need to live like that. God provided you with a friend who's better than your family, so you think this is how you're supposed to be. You think you're okay with it, for now.

Your friend is called Tulio and his skin is darker than yours, so is his hair, so are his eyes. He stresses when you come back with food, asks you, Miguel, where did you get that, or Miguel, did you steal that, did they follow you, are we safe, and you haven’t gotten caught once, at least never gotten caught in a way that you couldn’t wiggle out of with your stolen goods and maybe a few extra coins, so you don’t know why he worries so much. (Still, you assure him that you weren’t followed and that he’s safe, that he should really just eat because look at this delicious food you’ve brought home, Tulio, eat so you aren't so skinny.)

(Later, when you’re older and he’s stopped worrying so much about whether or not what you have is stolen, he steals things almost as much as you do. He still worries about getting caught, still worries about you getting caught, but by then you’re doing things that could get you killed, doing things that could get you publicly executed if you aren’t careful, so you do sort of understand his worry even if you pretend you don’t. It’s not really something you like to think about, but for now, that is neither here nor there. For now, you're twelve years old and just trying to survive.)

You don’t know where Tulio is or what he’s doing, don’t know how long he’s been away or how long it’ll be until he’s back- although if you had to guess about how long it’s been, you’d say about four hours. The shadow on the ground has moved about that much. You don’t think he’s usually gone this long, so you do find yourself a little worried. You don’t go out, though. You’ve been sick, very sick, you don’t really enjoy the thought of getting up to look for him. You're not exactly sure that you can anyway. 

So, you trace circles in the dirt, watch the shadows move, try to sleep. You’ve lost the shadow when he barrels in panting and wild-eyed, surmise that you _must_ have dozed off even if you don't remember sleeping. You don’t know what time it is, you don’t know how long he’s been gone, but he's back, so you think that's the important part. He's a comfort to you, you really don't like the idea of him not coming home. You notice he’s bleeding (which sends a pang of worry up your spine, sloshes the contents of your stomach so much that you almost vomit right then), notice he’s more filthy than he usually is, notice the sack he’s get strapped to his back. He hurries over to you, whispering loudly in the dark. 

“Miguel,” he strains, trying to keep quiet through his adrenaline, “Miguel, I brought us food, and I brought you medicine!”

He crouches beside you, takes his bag off his back and starts to spread the contents out over the floor. He’s brought a few hunks of bread, some cheese, fruit, which you’re excited about, and something you really don’t know the name of that you assume is the medicine. There’s also a few coins, which he gathers up and buries in the same general place you keep all your coins. There must be a _lot_ in there by now. Maybe enough to leave Spain?

He grabs the weird, misshapen... thing, that’s supposed to be medicine, and holds it out to you. “This will make you better,” he whispers hurriedly, presses it into your hands. His eyes are huge, face flushed, looks like he’s been running for miles. “Eat it,” he tells you, letting it go and sitting beside you, “please, it’ll make you better.”

You do eat it, slowly. It doesn’t taste very good, and you throw up sometime later, whatever it is really not agreeing with your stomach. When you ask him what it is, he just tells you it’s medicine. You think he knows about as much as you do about whatever it is he brought you to supposedly cure your illness, and you guess that’s fine. You ask him if he stole it, and he tells you he did, that’s why he was gone so long, he’d been running from people trying to arrest him. Once you’ve thrown up, once you think your stomach has settled and you’re alright to rest, you lay on him, tell him you’re glad he didn’t get arrested. 

Tulio tells you that he just hopes the medicine will make you better. He doesn’t want to lose you, you know that, but he doesn’t say it. (You don’t want to die, either, you don’t want to leave him alone. You’re pretty sure he’d starve to death on his own, he doesn’t like taking things that aren’t his unless he has to.) 

(You do get better a few days later, get to the point where it doesn’t exhaust you to get up and walk around, and then a few days after that you think you’re pretty much back to your old self. Tulio is convinced his medicine works, but you’re not sure. You don’t tell him that. You just appreciate all the trouble he went through to help you.)

(You think that’s what family is supposed to be like.)


End file.
